


His Space Was Growing Inwards

by matan4il



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Accident, LOTR, LoTR RPS - Freeform, M/M, Pain Killers, Physical Disability, Physical Therapy, Viggorli - Freeform, let your imagination run wild
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2005-07-11
Updated: 2005-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-02 20:53:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10952541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/pseuds/matan4il
Summary: When Orlando is happy, he can swallow the moon.An AU in which Orlando doesn't recover right away from falling off the roof.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Pairing:** Le Viggorli  
>  **Genre:** A fic of fragments. I hope you'll trust me.  
>  **Disclaimer:** Definitely didn't happen. Check out the hospital records and you'll see.  
>  **Rating:** Overall, NC-17 because I'm greedy, even when I'm writing.  
>  **Warnings:** Well, a man fell off a roof. You can expect some form of angst or another.
> 
>  **Beta:** I get to thank and adore the most wonderful Soar38, who gives me love and calls me petal!  
>  **Banner:** Is the generosity and patience of my lovely, smoochable Ihearthings_ii!  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter is dedicated:** To Velcro_girl999, who was the first person to encourage me to write on. *sends so much love to everyone*

1  
When Orlando is happy, he can swallow the moon. He doesn't always, but he can and when he does, the moon shines out from his skin, comes out through the deeper folds, where his thoughts have struggled their way to the surface or laughter left its mark.

2  
He thinks he sees a light, then a face, a light, a blink, a light and then darkness. Somewhere in between, they tell him he fell off a rooftop. He believes them, even though he can feel no pain in his legs. The dark takes over when he gives up trying to make out who they are.

3  
He's flying. Or is he flying?

He feels too light to know whether his weight has been lifted by wings or if his substance simply stopped existing. Someone's running next to him. Something's going up and something's going down. Lights again. Then darkness.

4  
Later on, he reconstructs in his mind's eye the hospital corridors - down which they rushed him on a stretcher to be operated on - and their wavy shape.

Each wave's peak is the door to an operating room, his mother tells him. She knows, she paced those corridors endlessly.

Up and down, up and down. He looks at the mental image of wavy concrete from the height of his wheelchair and sneers at it.

He can't remember what motion is.

5  
"It's time for your daily massage."

He would leap into his mother's lap and she would laugh, then she would rub his back gently for a while before sending him off to sleep. Since their father died, she had different treats for him and Sam. This was his. He knows that, though they'd never thought it at the time, they couldn't tell her love apart from her daily routine.

Sometimes they would hear her cry in the half of her bed that was still occupied.

6  
Sometimes, he would have trouble with sleep. Sam told him to count sheep.

"Before you reach 100, you'll be asleep," she promised. He tried to count to 100 and when he reached it, he tried to count to 200 and when he reached it, he thought that maybe sheep were too interesting.

Some of those sheep were white and some black, some were brown and some had sparkling dots. All had faces, except one, who had a face, though it was too blurry to be seen. They all passed him by with the sort of polite nod you'd give a stranger that interrupts your rest.

And now, now they were trembling, shivering and buzzzzzzzzing in his head with pain killerzzzzzzzz.

7  
They brought him to a rehabilitation centre, but he couldn't distinguish white from white, one set of doctoral faces from another, building walls, blinding light from the outside, where he cannot go.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter is dedicated:** To Green_grrl, because something unique in her feedback to the previous chapter touched me.

8  
He moves a little and a nurse comes over. "Chris," she says and he wonders if he'll remember. She explains a few of the centre's rules at length, the main ones that all should follow, but the buzzing of the painkillers is still humming in his head, duller than before and palpable.

From his window, from his wheelchair, he can name the leaves on the strawberry tree in the yard, connect the dots of some children playing in the street into the shape of a fire-breathing dragon or count the centre employees who are walking outside freely, taking advantage of their lunch-break.

He'll scare them off by telling them he can't remember motion.

He'll amaze them by how quickly he'll learn to walk again. He'll do so to run away from this place.

He'll go back to his bed and won't keep looking at things he may never experience again.

9  
Andrew, the night attendant, brings all sorts of gossip.

There's a girl in room 22c, she's been beaten pretty badly. Such a shame, she's only 14 years old. There's an old lady in room 3d who fell in the street. She broke her collarbone and hip. A dog scared her, so even on the floor she kept trying to get away and that's how she got the multiple fractures, and in room 18e...

In room 7a, Orlando is tired of listening to Andrew's self-aimed babble.

10  
He read something once about empires, but he can't recall what it was or if it had any bearing on human beings.

Empires were obviously shorter. At least, they wore their hair shorter than men did, because they wanted the buzzzzzzzzing to go uninterrupted. They delighted in it even when it turned their rise into a fall, when their doctors just nodded at their pain and spoke of pills that spilled into the leaps of faith.

"You were mumbling again in your sleep," Chris tells him the next morning.

11  
Eliza Doolittle was wonderful when she played Audrey Hepburn in that movie about Hungarians who speak English well. One day, Orlando will learn to speak it too and then he'll be introduced to the Queen, who will bow to him and sing ABBA songs at his party.

Then he'll dance all night and nothing will hurt anymore.

12  
"Your caretaker will arrive tomorrow. That's the guy who's going to be in charge of you and help you with your rehabilitation exercises. He's good, but he's also new here so don't scare him off right away. Agreed?" Chris passes the news to him along with his breakfast.

"He's new here, so they're only letting him be in charge of you and one more patient, I think it's the girl in room 22c. But you're going to be alright, don't worry." Andrew ends his day with another news report. "Isn't it the stupidest title, though? Caretaker, it's this centre's invention, mind you. They claim it's because the physiotherapists need a different name, one that's still friendly for the patients, but I reckon they're just trying to find ways to make male nurses feel better about their job titles."

Orlando knows he should be excited, but the corners of the room are moving and he doesn't know if he believes in caretakers anyway.

13  
They wake him up. Chris, that is. She brings him a smaller dosage of pills today and her wink reminds him it's the caretaker meeting day, which is supposed to be special, and he needs to be as fresh as he can be.

He wants to go back to sleep, he doesn't feel rested at all, but when the medications wear off, he can't.

14  
"Viggo," the blue eyes tell him it's a special day too. "Mortensen, but you can simply call me Viggo. And you are...?"

"Mortensen," Orlando repeats, a bit dazed, and then he corrects himself, "Orlando."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter is dedicated:** To Cream_and_sugar, whose feedback I love almost as much as I love her, and to the lovely Second_banana. Both ladies spotted something in the last chapter and made me grin.

15  
Chris brings more drugs. Orlando wonders if they make him forget things as well. It's so strange, he hasn't thought about it before because up until now, he wasn't sure he even wanted to remember how much he wanted to forget.

16  
When he wakes up in the afternoon, he hopes they have lowered the dosage permanently.

Viggo brings more blue eyes and the fulfillment of the promise from yesterday, that they'll start the exercises today. He brings some sort of a blue cushion with him.

"Have they told you exactly what your situation is now?"

They might have. Orlando doesn't know.

Viggo nods. "I thought so. You went through surgery and it was successful, but there's still some swelling around the spine, pressuring the vertebrae. You're here because we want to help bring the swelling down with some exercise and when it does, we'll also probably have to work a little on remembering how to walk. Sounds scary, doesn't it?"

Viggo waits for him to respond. Orlando does so by nodding.

"Yeah, I understand exactly what you mean. I won't promise you anything, Orlando. We'll do it together, step-by-step, but I can tell you that the most important thing is how dedicated to the process you are. So, how badly do you want to walk again?

Oh, God. He closes his eyes and tries to recall motion.

17  
Viggo brings him a few cartoon strips. "I thought you needed it."

Orlando thinks he's right. He hasn't laughed in quite a while. The cartoons are of Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes. They've been printed off the Internet. He reads one, smirking at the punch lines, while Viggo moves about in the room, getting some more of his stuff out, aligning them with the blue cushion in a closet. Definitely a score on caretaker bloke's part.

"Seen any family or friends since you've been here?"

"Barely," Orlando replies.

Viggo doesn't seem pleased. "Bit of a stifling crowd around here, wouldn't you say?"

"Somewhat," Orlando agrees in a serious tone, but his lips are curving up and he feels something of the bond between criminal accomplices start to form. He may be wrong, but he thinks he might like this guy.

18  
"Not the blue cushion again today, then?" Orlando's amused voice at the sight of a check board wins him a mock warning look from Viggo.

"No, we don't want to do too much at the beginning."

"So we'll build up my mind instead?"

"Someone has to."

19  
The night is full of surprises when Orlando listens to it. Andrew's nocturnal round of medications is running late and Viggo's got him open to the world again. He doesn't see the street, but he connects the dots of whoever's producing the sounds of night into a water-breathing dragon, whose kiss might mean eternal life.

20  
Viggo brings books.

Orlando can see right through his caretaker's plan and he welcomes it. For tomorrow, he orders a movie. Something fun, he says. When Viggo smiles at his request, he feels like he's achieved a small victory.

21  
"Is it true that you're only exercising and getting treatment half the time?" Andrew is curious and the pills are held in his curled right hand, water glass in the left one.

Orlando won't tell him a word about Viggo. Instead, he asks about different patients in this ward to keep a dreamless sleep a little further away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter is dedicated:** To Darknight999, because I think she needs love and I hope she knows she has mine! Also dedicated to Eenoogje, because she made me squee and giggle with her feedback! *g*

22  
"It's time for your massage."

Orlando can't roll over onto his abdomen for Viggo.

"Ready?"

He feels the careful, skilled fingers do it for him.

Viggo takes some oil and starts to rub Orlando's legs. He's slow about it, tender and yet firm, applying pressure that's surprisingly pleasant for Orlando. Viggo works his way quietly up and down the crippled legs, up and down like a hospital corridor. He goes up the thigh, but stops at a safe distance from the crotch, slides back down the leg or moves up to Orlando's back, even gentler then before there.

But there's a bodily scream bursting inwardly under his touch. One form of daring, vicious, delightful motion is back in Orlando's body.

23  
He's mostly tired.  
He sleeps a lot.  
He's still tired and distraught when he wakes up.  
He's never left alone except when he's sleeping under the influence of science or while he's waiting for another round of pills.

They haven't stopped playing around with drugs and dosages. The mornings when his therapy is due are better, for the most part. The afternoons he still has to waste away. He thinks they do so to keep him asleep most of the day. There's not that much to do in the rehab centre besides therapeutic exercise, but even that is a limited occupier of time and if a patient has nothing to do, a patient has much to complain about and enough time in which to do so.

The first sheep that comes hopping over his bed in this round informs him, before leaving room for her successor, that he's drifting off into another cement-like sleep. He's not sure about this, though, because there's room for no more than one thought in his head. Viggo cares. He hears the man arguing with a doctor, Scott something, about lowering Orlando's medications, before the Delishoons clean his room from the dust of the determined voices.

25  
Viggo leads him into an elevator, down a few floors and to the realization that there's a pool in the centre. In its waters he can see a bunch of exercise props and a Lady of the Lake, waiting to give him his legs back once he's proven his worth.

Viggo pulls down the wheelchair's breaks and walks around to him. Orlando doesn't spread his arms to reach for his caretaker. The Lady of the Rehab Pool smiles. The faint light shining from her is a delicate shade of green.

26  
Under the water's touch, he feels like he should be crumbling. His skin is white, though the doubly hydrogenised oxygen paints it a pale shade of azure. He's hypnotized by the sight and doesn't feel when Viggo starts moving his hands along one crippled thigh. Not crippled, temporarily unresponsive, Viggo corrected him the other day.

Now his caretaker moves the muscles by pressuring them in the right places, reminding them what it feels like, movement, simulating the way they functioned back when Orlando could walk.

Viggo's touch, water can't put it out.

27  
"All swords can be broken," Andrew nods in an imitation of wisdom as though there's a reason why Orlando should believe in his sword-expertise.

"I don't like swords," he says. Andrew asks why and goes on, talking about everything and anything he knew or made up about swords.

Orlando curses Andrew soundlessly to the rhythm of the pool waves' small motion.

28  
"They are small and white, they have these long, pointy noses that look like cones, only they're much too slender and long to be actual cones." Orlando pauses from his enthusiasm, finally letting Viggo react. Fearing it.

"And you say that they, these Delishoons, take on the human form we know as Andrew?"

"Yes!" Orlando's energies burst out again when he speaks. "They know you're looking at them and they don't want you to see them. They clean up everything in the ward, but they won't let you know it. And another thing? It irritates them too that when they take Andrew's form, they can't control his speech..."

Viggo nods, still in thought, perhaps considering the evidence and asks whether he should leave anything for them, chocolate maybe?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter is dedicated:** To the gorgeous Siew and Mylovemyliver. They both make me beam, in far more than one way!

29  
Viggo gets his way about lessening the medications.  
The sunlight touches his profile like a painter, instructing his model.  
He laughs at Orlando's general silliness.  
His laughter is a little mental.  
He quotes philosophers.  
He always does it with a smile in his eyes.  
He asks about the Delishoons and what they did last night.

There are so many levels on which Orlando finds his beauty.

30  
Orlando can't stop composing poems in his head, but they're all bad. He wants to write them down anyway. Someday, Viggo will buy him a laptop, to type them all up... Why is typing up, but writing down? He'll hold it in his lap, where a laptop should be held, and do the typing in an intimate crouching position over the damn thing. In the meantime, he doesn't dare tell the man about it.

31  
Orlando's thinking back to his 30th birthday when, in front of family and friends, Viggo gave him a laptop.

Orlando can't remember if this is a memory or a fantasy, but he likes the thought so he keeps rolling it back and forth in his mind.

Viggo gave him a laptop.  
Laptop a him gave Viggo.

32  
Chris nods when he tells her about mixing up words.  
"It's still the medication, Orlando. Yes, even though they've lessened the dosage. Don't worry about it." But she does, he can tell. He wants to ask, how does that fit in with what he overheard the other day, when she was telling another nurse, Mary, that Viggo is obviously doing wonders for the bloke in room 7a.

He doesn't.  
Instead, he tells her of the book they're going to read today, between the massage and the exercise.

33  
When he falls asleep naturally, when he's off the drugs and isn't thinking about things that may be, he dreams of sheep that have blue eyes and an American accent, hopping over his bed.

34  
"There's a girl in room 22c," Viggo says. "I'm her caretaker too. She's been beaten up pretty badly. It's sick, you know. She's 14 years old and has to learn how to use her right arm again. And you will never believe why. Because she's black. A few neo-Nazi punks cornered her up in some alley. I bet they're not much older than her."

He sighs. "Maybe they don't even get what they did. But I have to tell you, sometimes I don't understand the way things work in this world."

Orlando loves Viggo.  
This moment is the culmination of every second, up until now, when he did and didn't know it yet.

He nods and adds, "When you think about it, between her and me? We'd make one whole person."

35  
When he looks down at the centre's yard, he remembers there's a roof over his head, like the roof he fell from. When he walked on that one, he thought he could fly. When they were running with his stretcher down the hospital corridors, he thought he was flying.

When he was falling to the ground - - -

But when Viggo looks at him a second too long, he dares to think of flying again.


End file.
